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According to police sources, the man who fatally shot retired Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe initially planned to attack a religious group leader, according to Japanese media on Saturday.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, has also stated that he has a grudge against a “specific organisation” – possibly a religious group – that he believes is linked to Abe, according to Kyodo News, citing police. The report did not name the religious leader.
Abe, 67, was shot from behind when in an election campaign speech near the train station in Nara’s western prefecture on Friday morning.
Yamagami was apprehended at the scene while holding a homemade gun. According to the police, he denied committing the crime because he disagreed with Abe’s political beliefs.
He also had no idea what he wanted to do with his life after graduating from high school, and had quit a job 2 months ago because he was ‘tired,’ according to The Japan Times newspaper.
Meanwhile, police raided his Nara apartment on Friday and discovered bombs and homemade guns, according to the report. Yamagami, who went to a public high school in Nara Prefecture, decided to write in his graduation yearbook that he “didn’t have a clue” regarding his future plans.
According to government officials, he was a Maritime Self-Defense officer at the Kure base in Hiroshima Prefecture in 2005.
He worked at a manufacturing company in the Kansai region in 2020, but he told the company in April that he wanted to leave because he was “tired,” and he left the job the following month, according to the report.
